Steve Martland - Babi Yar + Drill

An album of modern classical works composed by Steve Martland, originally released on CD (FACD 266) by the Factory Classical label in 1989.

Born in Liverpool in 1954, Martland studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague with Louis Andriessen, whose hard-edged minimalism deeply impacted his own, iconoclastic style. Alongside his career as a composer, Martland was a champion of music education and a vocal critic of academic dogma. Alas he passed away in 2013.

The album's first half Babi Yar sets three orchestras crashing against each other, a cacophony of stabs, blasts, bells and gongs, grappling with the Holocaust as it references the horror and confusion of the massacres perpetrated by the Nazis in the ravine, near Kiev, of that name.

The second side, Drill presents the mechanistic playing of two performers hammering away at a pair of pianos for nearly 30 minutes. As with every Martland release, the sleevenotes carry the legend 'This recording should be played at high volume.' It's an incredibly powerful album, newly remastered for this 2022 Factory Benelux edition.